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The Russian information war against Ukraine was first articulated by Valery Gerasimov in 2013. [1] [2] [3] He believed that Western governments were instigating color revolutions and the Arab Spring, which posed a threat to Russia. [4] Gerasimov's definition reflected his view of Western involvement in these events, particularly the 2011–2013 Russian protests.
The concept of "Informatsionnaya voyna" (Russian : информационная война, lit. 'Informational war') encompasses various strategies, including cyberwarfare, which is often presented as technical defenses against technical attacks in warfare. [5] However, it is just one aspect of Russia's information war. Russia employs diverse tools such as controlling undersea communication cables, shaping national narratives, manipulating the news cycle, and flooding the information space with Russian bots and trolls. The goal is to achieve strategic victory and exert reflexive control. [6] [7] These efforts were employed during the 2022 Russian escalation of its war in Ukraine.
Due to effective censorship, most media outlets in Russia are government-controlled, allowing Kremlin messaging to successfully sway the citizens of the Russian Federation to support its approach in Ukraine. [8] The Kremlin denies waging war in Ukraine, claiming it only aims to protect Russian speakers against Ukrainian Nazis. [9] This narrative has been reinforced by Russian television for eight years, giving it an advantage through repetition and familiarity. [10] According to a recent poll, 58 percent of Russians approved of this perspective between February 28 and March 3. [10]
Ukraine also communicates with its population, as well as other governments and populations.[ relevant? ] It portrays itself as resilient and fearless but in need of weapons. [11] Ukraine's online propaganda largely focuses on its heroes and martyrs, using their stories to emphasize Ukrainian fortitude and Russian aggression. [12] These narratives are spread not only by Ukraine's leaders but also by its citizens through social media. Additionally, Ukraine's strategy includes employing comedy [13] and promoting skepticism towards Russian narratives. [14] [15]
Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, describes a novel type of warfare that incorporates elements of propaganda, demoralization, distraction and political posturing in both peace and times of war, and above all the importance of social media, beyond both cyberwarfare and information war as NATO understands them, [16] He suggested a 4:1 ratio of nonmilitary to military measures. Nonmilitary tactics also come under the military in Russia, and although United States Marine Corps research suggests that the ratio is still largely aspirational, it indicates recognition of "the utility of nonmilitary measures in interstate confrontation, especially during what would be considered peacetime." [17]
The Russian Federation misinforms and misleads its citizens and the audience of its television channels in other countries - Channel One Russia and Russia-24 for example. [18]
Like Ukraine, Belarus and Russia both consider Kievan Rus their cultural ancestor, [19] part of a shared past. Many Russians see Kyiv as the birthplace of their nation. [20] Kievan Rus' reached its greatest extent under Yaroslav the Wise (1019–1054); his sons issued its first written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda , shortly after his death. [21] In the 2000s, Russia waged a large-scale propaganda campaign in Ukraine, based on the doctrine of "Russian world", and Putin said "...we are one nation. Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities." [22] Its ideological basis was post-Soviet revanchism in the Russian Federation for the cultural, economic, and territorial restoration of pre-1991 borders and the restoration of the former Soviet "zone of influence" in Europe and Asia. [23] [24] [25] [26]
This revanchism sees three categories of the world's population as "Russian": ethnic Russians, regardless of where they live; a Russian-speaking population regardless of nationality; compatriots who have never lived on the territory of the Russian Empire, the USSR and other state entities, as well as their descendants. [27]
At the 2008 Bucharest summit April 2–4, 2008, Putin told United States President George W. Bush: "You understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a state! What is Ukraine?" [28] [29] [30]
He regularly refers to Russians and Ukrainians as one people, which is an utterly tone-deaf comment that many Ukrainians hear as a denial of their culture, history and language.
Also, many Russians idealize Soviet Russia, the rule of the Communist Party as a time of prosperity, and the ruling United Russia party as heir to the country's "glorious past." [32] Since the collapse of the USSR, Russian politicians have talked about restoring Russia's influence in post-Soviet countries. "According to Vladimir Bukovsky, a dissident who spent a decade in Soviet prisons before his exile to the West in 1976, Vladimir Putin is totally genuine when he says that the disintegration of the Soviet Union was a 'geopolitical catastrophe'." [33]
Putin sees the growing number of NATO members in Eastern Europe as an "existential threat", [34] and has written that Russia and Ukraine are really one country. [35] This revanchism focuses on Ukraine, whose withdrawal from the USSR led to its collapse. [36] [34] "Russia is restoring its unity—the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe in our history, has been overcome," exulted RIA Novosti, Russia's main state online news agency, on February 26, 2022. [37] The Putin regime contrasts "ours" and "others" in Ukraine, and suggests that violence against "others" is desirable and even required. [38]
The Russian government frames its hybrid war as a conflict between Russia and NATO, but while geopolitics and its desire for a post-Soviet sphere play into its focus on Ukraine, so do its domestic politics. An independent Ukrainian democracy might inspire Russians to demand the establishment of their own democracy and "perhaps even challenge Mr. Putin's authoritarianism." [31]
In June 2014, the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) DC obtained materials used to train Russian information war specialists. [39] They instructed Russian soldiers to "actively influence the consciousness and system of knowledge and ideas of the target country," according to NSDC Secretary Andriy Parubiy. [40]
Propaganda targeting the Russian people themselves, justifying a future war against Ukraine, appeared even before Russia's first incursion into Ukraine in 2014. [41] In 2009, Maxim Kalashnikov's "Independent Ukraine: Failure of a Project" portrayed Ukraine as a Yugoslavia on the verge of an ethnic breakup. Novels such as Fyodor Berezin's "War 2010: Ukrainian Front", Georgiy Savitsky's "Battlefield Ukraine: The broken trident" and Alexander Sever's "Russian-Ukrainian Wars" posited a war against Ukraine. [42] [43] According to activists, Russia has also waged an information war against Ukraine through cinema. [44]
Kremlin-run media in 2014 created the impression in Crimea that "fascists, anti-Semites and extremists" were in power in Kyiv and chaos ruled the rest of Ukraine, but this had "little or nothing to do with reality." [38]
Since Ukraine's independence, Russia has waged a constant information war against Ukraine, especially under the pro-Russian President Victor Yanukovych. [45] In February 2014, for example, Russians flatly denied that their military maneuvers in any way threatened Ukraine:
"The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs denies the participation of the Black Sea Fleet in destabilizing the situation in Crimea." [46]
"These were local self-defense forces," Putin said of the men who tried to seize the Crimean parliament. [47]
In February 2017, the Russian Minister of Defence acknowledged the existence of "information operations forces" in Russia. [48] In 2021, Open Media, [49] VTimes, [50] and the Moscow bureau of Deutsche Welle was shut down. [51]
A Russian law signed on 4 March 2022 provides drastic penalties for spreading "false information" or protesting the war or "discrediting" Russia's actions in Ukraine. [52] Russian schools also must follow the official narrative. [53] After the 2022 legislation made it illegal to publish information on the Ukrainian war that the Kremlin deems "false", some Western media withdrew their reporters out of concern for their safety. [54] Independent Russian media outlets that shut down in the wake of the law included TV Rain and Novaya Gazeta , whose editor received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. [51] News website Znak announced its closure, and Ekho Moskvy, owned by Kremlin-linked Gazprom, also shut down. [55] The websites of Deutsche Welle, the BBC, Meduza and Radio Free Europe became inaccessible from within Russia without a VPN. [51] News sites Mediazona, Republic, Snob.ru and Agentstvo were also blocked from the Russian internet after the law passed, and only available by VPN. [56]
Russia also jammed commercial broadcast signals and penetrated both civilian and military communications networks.
"Russia, they own or operate Ukrainian cellular companies, banks, electricity. They don't need to hack anything. It's a secret war conducted by agents of influence."— Oleksandr Danylyuk, former secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council [57]
Russia's Leer-3 RB-341V drone system can listen to or suppress cellular communications, and even send text messages to front-line soldiers. Ukrainian soldiers have received texted jeers and threats from the Russians on their cell phones, [58] and family members of Ukrainian soldiers have also reported receiving calls saying that those soldiers were dead. [57] The Russian Orlan-10 has also been extensively used in electronic warfare in Ukraine.
However, tactical communications have been an issue for the Russian military, to the point where some troops in Georgia received their orders from an Air Force officer who arrived by helicopter. [59] Then-president Dmitry Medvedev ordered an expansion of the military's radio system in 2009, with a contract to a manufacturer partially owned by a former Medvedev advisor. [59] The contract was subsequently troubled by embezzlement allegations. [60] [61]
On March 9 internet service provider Triolan suffered an outage in Kharkiv and other cities caused by a factory reset of several of its devices. Recovery efforts were hampered by shelling in the area at the time, which made it dangerous to go on-site and may have damaged internet connectivity. [62] Attackers had previously disrupted its connectivity and DNS routing on February 24. [63] National telecoms operator Ukrtelecom in late March also suffered, then recovered from, a major cyber-attack. [64]
In Russia, as of March 14, peering agreements were still in place but new regulation was expected to ban web hosting outside Russia and require the use of official DNS servers. [65] Transit providers Lumen and Cogent both left Russia after the invasion in early March, but this had a limited effect on the Russian internet connectivity because they continued to peer with some of the larger Russian ISPs, such as Rostelecom and Rascom, at exchanges outside Russia. [66]
Information warfare has deep roots in Russia. In addition to presenting a Russian narrative and version of events, it strives to cause confusion and cast doubt on the idea of truth. [67] Russia transmits war propaganda through news media in its ongoing war against Ukraine. [68] [69] As early as September 2008, Alexander Dugin, a Russian fascist [70] [71] known as "Putin's brain," advocated an invasion of Ukraine and other countries that had previously been part of the USSR: [72] [70] "The Soviet empire will be restored. in different ways: by force, diplomacy, economic pressure ... Everything will depend on place and time."
On 28 February 2022 RIA Novosti published, then took down, an incorrect report that Russia had won the Russo-Ukrainian War and "Ukraine has returned to Russia". [73] [74] On 14 March, Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at Channel One, interrupted a live broadcast to protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine, [75] carrying a poster that said in Russian and English: "Stop the war, don't believe the propaganda, here you are being lied to." [76] RT, a Russian state-controlled television network, was officially banned in the European Union and suspended by television service providers in several other countries. [77] YouTube blocked RT and Sputnik across Europe to prevent Russian disinformation. [78] Many RT journalists resigned after Russia invaded Ukraine. [79] [80]
Russian teachers received detailed instructions on teaching the invasion of Ukraine. [81] The Mayakovsky Theatre in Moscow received a government email "to refrain from any comments on the course of military actions in Ukraine", warning that any negative comments would be "regarded as treason against the Motherland". [81]
The Russian government uses the "Z" symbol as a pro-war propaganda tool, Russian civilians as a sign of support for the invasion. [82]
According to Pjotr Sauer of The Guardian, many Russians still support Putin and don’t believe that the “special military operation” in Ukraine is related to Russian propaganda and disinformation. [83] Polls conducted by the Levada Center between 17 and 21 February found that 60% of respondents blamed the US and NATO for escalating tensions, while only 4% blamed Russia. [84] Similarly, an independent telephone survey from 28 February to 1 March found that 58% of Russian respondents approved of the military operation. [85] [86] However, a series of four online polls by Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation found that between 25 February and 3 March, the share of respondents in Moscow who considered Russia an "aggressor" increased from 29% to 53%, while the share of those who considered Russia a "peacemaker" fell by half from 25% to 12%. [87] [88] [ excessive detail? ]
Some observers have noted a "generational struggle" among Russians over perception of the war, [90] with younger Russians generally opposed to it [91] and older Russians more likely to accept the narrative presented by state-controlled media in Russia. [92] Kataryna Wolczuk of Chatham House said, "[Older] Russians are inclined to believe the official narrative that Russia is defending Russian speakers in Ukraine, so it's offering protection rather than aggression." [92] Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny said the "monstrosity of lies" in the Russian state media "is unimaginable. And, unfortunately, so is its persuasiveness for those without access to alternative information." [93]
On 12 March, YouTube blocked an unspecified number of media outlets controlled by the Russian state, including RT and Sputnik, citing its policy against content that "denies, minimizes, or trivializes well-documented violent events". [94] On 18 March, the British media regulator Ofcom revoked RT's broadcasting licence. [95] On 2 April, it was reported that Putin's approval rating in Russia had risen to 83% a month after the invasion, from a 69% approval rating as prior to the invasion during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. [89]
State-controlled television channels, through which most Russians consume news, [96] presented the invasion as a liberation mission and accused Ukrainian troops of attacking civilian targets. [83] [97] Mediazona, a Russian independent media outlet, reported that the FSB had fabricated a video of a woman accusing Ukraine of war crimes in Mariupol [98] [99] and shared screenshots of emails instructing media outlets not to reveal the source of the video. [98]
In an op-ed published in the Russian state outlet RIA Novosti, Timofei Sergeytsev openly advocated the "purification" of Ukrainians, blurring the lines between the Ukrainian government, military, and civilians, then the cultural genocide of Ukraine through the obliteration of the Ukrainian name and culture, and finally the reeducation of the remaining civilians together with a strict regime of censorship in order to incorporate them in a greater Russia. [100]
Alexei Navalny tweeted in April 2022 that "warmongers" among Russian state media personalities "should be treated as war criminals". [101] On 13 April 2014, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, in a statement posted on the alliance's website, accused Russia of promoting war and wanting to overthrow Ukraine. [102] In early 2022 the United States government warned that Russia was planning a false flag operation to invade Ukraine, and pointed to "a pattern of Russian behavior" that included invading and occupying parts of Georgia in 2008, and noted Russia's "failure to honor its 1999 commitment to withdraw its troops and munitions from Moldova, where they remain without the government's consent." [103] In 2014, Vladimir Putin called opponents of the war nothing more than "traitors" and a "fifth column". [71]
Children's television has also broadcast war propaganda, as when Phil the dog joined the army in 2014 to become "a real defender". [104]
The throttling of information into Russia also impedes the Kremlin's own information diet. The Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote in 2022 that the Ukrainian invasion "bears an eerie resemblance to Soviet decision making in 1979 to invade Afghanistan," poor intelligence, misreading the international reaction, over-optimism, incomprehension of the costs. [105]
Russia has learned to use respected Western media like BBC News, Reuters, and AFP to promote anti-Ukrainian propaganda. These media outlets were unprepared for the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2014, and often became unintentional distributors of Russian anti-Ukrainian propaganda. [106] [107]
Russia has also learned to skillfully use Western PR companies to disseminate the narratives it needs in the interests of various Russian government institutions and private corporations. [108]
The Kremlin has instructed official Russian television outlets to rebroadcast Tucker Carlson's show “as much as possible.” [109] [110] [111] Marjorie Taylor Greene has also gotten approving coverage on Kremlin media, as when she said that the US was responsible for the 2014 overthrow of the Russian puppet government in the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity. [112]
Many Ukrainian news outlets are financed by wealthy investors. [113] [114] Some of these investors have close ties to Russian political power. [115] This highly concentrated ownership of Ukrainian media has set a high barrier to entry for the market. [116] Four financial-political groups control nearly all broadcasting in Ukraine. [117] [118]
The top 20 most-viewed TV channels almost all belong to Ukraine's wealthiest oligarchs:
A decline in advertising revenues has left media outlets even more dependent on support from politicised owners, hence hindering their editorial independence. Paid content disguised as news (known as jeansa) remains widespread in the Ukrainian media, weakening their and journalists' credibility, especially during electoral campaigns. [123]
Media ownership remains opaque, despite a February 2014 bill requiring full disclosure of ownership structures. [123]
Other oligarch-owned media outlets:
Russian media have been used for propaganda to persuade domestic and world audiences. [133] Among the best-known are Sputnik, RT (formerly RussiaToday), RIA Novosti, Life (formerly LifeNews). [134] [135]
About 85% of Russians get most of their information from Russian state media. [136]
Employees of Russian news outlets have been resigning since the 2022 incursion into Ukraine: “English-language RT staff member and one frequent RT contributor in Moscow have quit the network in recent days over the editorial position on the war, the Guardian has learned.” [137] Zhanna Agalakova, a correspondent for two decades for Pervy Kanal (Channel One) in New York and Paris, announced in March that she was leaving over the invasion. [138] Liliya Gildeyeva, an anchor on the state-run channel NTV, also resigned. [139] Marina Ovsyannikova has been hired by the German media company Die Welt, a month after she drew worldwide attention for bursting onto the set of a live broadcast on Russian state television to protest the war in Ukraine. [140]
RT is an important Russian weapon in the information war. [141] In 2014, John Kerry, then United States Secretary of State, called it a state-sponsored "propaganda bullhorn". [142] Its audience in 2015 was 700 million people in more than 100 countries. [143]
"RT's 2015 budget, according to its website, was 13.85 billion rubles (about $220 million at 2015 exchange rates). However, in a 2015 interview with the Russian independent media outlet Dozhd TV, Simonyan said the budget for that year was 18 billion rubles. The RT website claims its 2016 budget was $275 million (17 billion rubles), while a video published by RT contradicts this information by claiming its 2016 budget was $300 million (21 billion rubles). In 2019, RT announced on its Telegram channel that RT and Rossiya Segodnya's budget from federal funding was $440 million, yet the official federal budget number for 2019 was $430 million. [144]
In 2012, RT had the highest government spending per employee in the world, $183 thousand per person. [145]
As of 2014, Russia had spent more than $9 billion on its propaganda. [146] [147] In 2021, it increased the state media budget to 211 billion rubles (about $2.8 billion), 34 billion rubles ($460 million) more than the previous year. [148]
On March 6, 2014, "1 + 1" and Channel 5 in the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea were turned off and Russia 24 captured the broadcasting frequencies of Crimea's private "Chernomorskaya TV and Radio Company". In Simferopol, state television and radio broadcaster Krym was also blocked[ clarification needed ] by people in camouflage uniforms. General Director Stepan Gulevaty called the police, but they did not respond. [149]
On March 6, 2014, an Internet poll on the ATR TV website found that most respondents opposed the annexation of Crimea. [150] The next day Russian military in Crimea disconnected the ATR website. They also shut down the analogue broadcast signal of the Ukrainian TV channel Inter, on the frequencies of which NTV is broadcast. [150]
On August 10, 2014, the German provider Hetzner Online AG sent a letter of apology to Glavkom. The provider had previously moved to block Glavkom at the request of the Russian Roskomnadzor for publishing material about the March for the federalization of Siberia. [151]
In July 2019, Hetzner Online warned The Ukrainian Week that the site would be blocked until "extremist content" was removed. The provider received a request for this from Roskomnadzor, which considers the 2015 material on Right Sector a violation of Russian legislation. [152]
For several months, DDoS attacks were carried out against Ukrainian information sites: Censor.NET, Tizhden.ua, Ukrayinska Pravda and others, as well as the website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, with the appearance of ads for V. Yanukovych. [153] Similarly, in January 2022 Ukrainian cyber official Victor Zhora reported attacks on over 90 websites of 22 government groups on January 14, 2022. About 50 websites were vandalized while the remainder suffered some damage. [154]
Russia uses disinformation both to support an image of its greatness and importance — or of the weakness of its enemies — or sometimes to deny its actions.
Kyiv “hasn’t been bombed by anyone” Channel One pundit Artyom Sheynin assured viewers on February 24, 2022, for example. [137] Also on February 24, “explosions and gunfire were heard through the day in Ukraine's capital and elsewhere in the country, with at least 70 people reported killed,” according to Reuters. [155] Most Russians get their information from television, [115] although younger Russians tend to prefer online sources. These now require a VPN connection, making the truth now “mostly is discovered by people who already distrust the Kremlin and its state-sponsored media.” [156]
The untethering of the Russian news diet from facts doesn't just affect the populace. The Kremlin has been described as:
a bunch of old men who can't quite get over the fact that they're no longer running a superpower, and who also are increasingly surrounded by people who tell them what they want to hear. [157]
Other more subtle attacks, known as reflexive control, systematically distort and reinterpret words, leading "extremists" to become an accepted description for independent journalists and human rights activists, or peaceful demonstrators to be arrested as security threats. [38]
"You could spend every hour of every day trying to bat down every lie, to the point where you don't achieve anything else. And that's exactly what the Kremlin wants," says Greg Pryatt, former US ambassador to Ukraine. [158] :59
In November 2013, the pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych blocked [159] the legislatively approved course towards European integration, and the Revolution of Dignity began. Putin "used disinformation to lay the groundwork to annex Crimea in 2014, and to support continued fighting in Ukraine's Eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk," wrote Forbes contributor Jill Goldenziel. [160] Again in 2022, Kremlin propaganda had the goal of preparing world public opinion for the invasion of Ukraine.
In 2014 Putin for quite some time denied sending troops into Ukraine. He later said Russia was "protecting" the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine. [161] When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, it gave many alternative explanations for its actions there as well, [162] and denied having plans to attack it. In 2014 Putin again denied his invasion, despite photos of military vehicles there from the North Caucasus Military District [163] One car had forgotten to camouflage an icon of the Guards Division. The soldiers also carried the Dragunov self-loading sniper rifle), only used by the Russian military. [164]
In March 2022, Russians said they had found evidence at the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant that Ukraine was working on a nuclear bomb. Experts scoffed at the claim, which they said was both impossible with the fuel there and not how anyone would run a secret weapons program. [165]
The most fake tweets in a day, or on a single topic, by Russian disinformation agency Internet Research Agency (IRA), [166] following the shooting down of the Malaysian MH17 airliner. [167] Russia took extensive measures and gave many narratives to hide its involvement. [168] [169]
In three days after the crash, the Russian Internet Research Agency posted 111,486 tweets from fake accounts, mostly in Russian. [170] At first they said that Russian-backed rebels downed a Ukrainian plane; later tweets said Ukraine had shot the airliner down. [171] RT quoted a Twitter account purportedly of an air traffic controller named Carlos who said he had seen Ukrainian fighter jets following the airliner [172] Supposedly Ukraine mistook the airliner for the Russian presidential jet. [173] In August 2015 Komsomoloskaya Pravda published a wiretap transcript of two named CIA operatives planning the MH17 attack, ridiculed for English that recalled "Google translated Russian phrases read from a script". [174]
On December 20, 2017, the Intelligence and Security Committee of the British Parliament in a report specifically emphasized that Russia had waged a massive information war with intense, multi-channel propaganda to convince the world that Russia did not shoot down the plane. [175] [176] [177]
In 2022 Russia insisted it was merely conducting military exercises on the Ukrainian borders, then declared that it needed to protect Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine. [178] Russia also amassed troops at the Ukrainian border with Belarus and held naval exercises in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, which Kyiv called "an unjustified complication of international shipping", that made navigation "virtually impossible". [179] On February 15, 2022, Russia said it would "partially pull back" from Ukraine's borders, but according to the US, in fact sent additional troops. [157] "We can't really take the Russians for their word" said Canadian ambassador to the United Nations Bob Rae, after Russia resumed shelling within hours of announcing a ceasefire for civilian evacuation. [180]
After shelling a nuclear power plant complex in Zaporizhzhia, the Kremlin said its military seized it "to prevent Ukrainians and neo-Nazis from 'organizing provocations'". [165]
On 16 August 2022, Putin claimed that he "decided to conduct a special military operation in Ukraine in full compliance with the UN Charter." According to Putin, "the objectives of this operation are clearly defined – ensuring the security of Russia and our citizens, protecting the residents of Donbass from genocide." [181] On 21 September 2022, Putin announced a partial mobilisation, following a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv. [182] In his address to the Russian audience, Putin claimed that the "Policy of intimidation, terror and violence" against the Ukrainian people by the pro-Western "Nazi" regime in Kyiv "has taken on ever more terrible barbaric forms", Ukrainians have been turned into "cannon fodder", and therefore Russia has no choice but to defend "our loved ones" in Ukraine." [183]
In October 2022, Russian-American writer and professor Nina Khrushcheva said, alluding to George Orwell's novel 1984 , that in "Putin’s Russia, war is peace, slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength and illegally annexing a sovereign country’s territory is fighting colonialism." [184]
Since the collapse of the USSR, Russia has circulated propaganda and disinformation to demonize Ukrainians. Neo-Nazis play a recurring role in Russian propaganda; in 2022 to justify military "denazification." [165] In Mariupol, Russians were told in 2022, Ukrainians fired on Russian soldiers despite the cease-fire, and according to TASS neo-Nazis were "hiding behind civilians as a human shield." [165]
According to Kacper Rękawek, a postdoctoral fellow with the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo, simultaneously portraying Ukrainians as fascists and depraved pro-gay liberals, as opposed to the solid conservative values of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, has roots in a longstanding narrative of politicians both in and outside Ukraine that ties Ukrainian speakers in Western Ukraine to far-right nationalists who fought against Soviets in World War II. [188]
Russia "has an extensive network of allies and front organizations, and reconstructs reality and rewrites history to legitimize itself and undermine others", says a 2018 article in Nature. [189]
In the early 1990s, the first such propaganda tropes presented events with the phrases "after the collapse of the USSR", and "with the collapse of the USSR", to create the impression that these phenomena arose because of the collapse of the USSR, and not the reverse.[ citation needed ] Propaganda tried to portray Ukraine as economically and politically bankrupt as a state. In 2009 Russia accused Ukraine of "stealing Russian gas". [190]
Ukrainian figures have been allegedly quoted making provocative statements. [191] A criminal case was brought against the leader of the Ukrainian Right Sector, Dmytro Yarosh, for supposedly publishing an appeal to Dokka Umarov to carry out terrorist attacks in the Russian Federation. A day later authorities announced that the "appeal" had been the work of hackers. [192]
In the same way as Russian propaganda sought to portray its swift victory as inevitable against incompetent Ukrainian commanders, Russian media also sought to create fear and loathing with stereotypes of its own Chechen fighters. [193]
In 2022 government groups posed as independent news entities and created fake personas on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Telegram and also the Russian-language Odnoklassniki and V Kontakte, to disseminate Russian narratives, such as the alleged helplessness of Ukrainians and videos of their fighters surrendering. [194]
According to The Washington Post , in 2014 the Russian military intelligence (GRU) created more than 30 pseudo-Ukrainian groups and social media accounts, as well as 25 "leading English-language" publications. Posing as ordinary Ukrainians, intelligence operatives concocted news and disseminated comments to turn pro-Russian citizens against the protesters. [195]
In early 2016 Ukrainian journalists discovered a network of dozens of social media groups, run from Moscow on multiple social media, that used nationalist rhetoric to undermine the Ukrainian government and mobilize protesters. [196]
Ever since the early 2010s, Russian Wikipedia and its editors have experienced numerous and increasing threats of nationwide blocks and country-wide enforcement of blacklisting by the Russian government, as well as several attempts to Internet censorship, propaganda, and disinformation, [203] [204] [205] [206] more recently during the 2014 Russo-Ukrainian war in the Donbas region [167] [207] [208] [209] and the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War. [210]
In February and March 2022, [210] the first week after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and break out of the Russo-Ukrainian War, [210] Russian Wikipedia editors warned their readers and fellow editors of several, reiterated attempts by the Putin-led Russian government of political censorship, Internet propaganda, disinformation, attacks, and disruptive editing towards an article listing Russian military casualties as well as Ukrainian civilians and children due to the ongoing war. [210]
On March 11, 2022, Belarusian political police (GUBOPiK) arrested one of the most active users of Russian Wikipedia Mark Bernstein for "spread of anti-Russian materials", violating the "fake news" law after being doxxed on Telegram. [211]
In April–July 2022, the Russian authorities put several Wikipedia articles on their list of forbidden sites, [212] [213] [214] and then ordered search engines to mark Wikipedia as a violator of Russian laws. [215]
During and before its annexation of Crimea and encroachment into Donetsk and Luhansk with AstroTurf rebellions, Russia demonized Ukrainians in the eyes of the Russian and international communities. [216] [217] [218]
May 2017 - Poroshenko blocked access in Ukraine to Russian servers for VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Yandex and Mail.ru, claiming they participated in an information war against Ukraine. [276]
On November 23, 2016, the European Parliament passed a resolution opposing Russian propaganda. [338] Putin responded by calling the work of the Russian news agencies RT and Sputnik effective. [339]
On March 1 YouTube blocked channels connected to RT and Sputnik across Europe, [201] then worldwide on March 11 due to its insistence that Russia was not waging war in Ukraine. [340] Roku and DirectTV also dropped RT. [341]
No precise equivalent appears to exist to the systemic Russian disinformation campaign, although Ukraine and other interested parties have used speeches, television appearances, social media, cyber warfare and viral memes against Russia. Not all of these actions can be attributed with certainty, but the United States has deployed soft power on Ukraine's behalf, at least one self-identified Anonymous account has claimed to have damaged Russian infrastructure, and a number of official Ukraine social media accounts have successfully created a favorable narrative.
The U.S. government, suspecting a buildup to a false flag attack, released its intelligence findings about Russian troop movements before the invasion began, undermining the posited plans to blame an attack on Ukraine; "the U.S. government was very forthcoming...there wasn't an information vacuum that the Russians could step in and fill" explained researcher Laura Edelson. [342]
Ukraine on the other hand has created a narrative of Ukrainian bravery and indomitability.
“If Ukraine had no messages of the righteousness of its cause, the popularity of its cause, the valor of its heroes, the suffering of its populace, then it would lose,” said Peter W. Singer, a strategist and senior fellow at New America, a think tank in Washington. “Not just the information war, but it would lose the overall war.” [343]
On 5 April 2022, Russia's opposition politician Alexei Navalny said the "monstrosity of lies" in the Russian state media "is unimaginable. And, unfortunately, so is its persuasiveness for those without access to alternative information." [93] He tweeted that "warmongers" among Russian state media personalities "should be treated as war criminals. From the editors-in-chief to the talk show hosts to the news editors, [they] should be sanctioned now and tried someday." [344]
Zelenskyy's speeches have repeatedly gone viral and galvanized the Ukrainian population. [345] An underdog hero tackling evil forces attacking him is an ancient human narrative as fundamental and continuing as Gilgamesh and Luke Skywalker, and Zelenskyy has told it masterfully. [346] Wearing a green military t-shirt, [347] [348] he passionately appealed for help for his people in fiery virtual speeches to the parliaments of Canada, [349] the United Kingdom [350] and the European Union, [351] as well as a joint session of the U.S. Congress, to a standing ovation each time.
He has spoken to the Russian people directly, [352] in Russian, his first language. Also in Russian, he positioned himself on March 3 as a "neighbor" and an "ordinary guy", needling Putin for recently receiving his visitors at an extraordinarily long table:
"Come sit with me! Just not 30 meters away like with Macron and Scholz. … I'm your neighbor … What are you afraid of?" [353]
Putin's previous shirtless photo-ops sought to position [354] him as a strong and virile leader. Images of the younger Zelenskyy wearing body armor and drinking tea with Ukrainian soldiers starkly contrasted with news broadcasts of Putin in rococo and very socially distanced [355] The body armor photo was taken in 2021, [356] and he actually drank tea with the soldiers a few days before the invasion began, [357] but the images were real if out of context, and the pictures of Putin at an enormously long table, apparently for fear of COVID-19, were also real. [358]
Ukrainian media has been particularly savvy in playing up the eleventh hour rise of its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose line, "I need ammunition; not a ride," may rival the likes of William Shakespeare's "cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war" in terms of quotability. [359]
Official Ukrainian social media accounts have sought to bolster support for efforts against the invasion and spread information, with targeted posts and videos used to recruit soldiers and call for international aid. Some media analysts have highlighted the Ukrainian officials' methods as beneficial. [360] Several academics, including Professors Rob Danish and Timothy Naftali, have highlighted Zelenskyy's speaking ability and use of social media to spread information and draw upon feelings of shame and concern while building kinship with viewers. [361] Real-time information about the invasion has been spread by online activists, journalists, politicians, and members of the general population, both in and out of Ukraine. [362]
Official communications of Ukrainian authorities, in particular, during the preparation of the announced 2023 offensive, were confusing, presumably intentionally, to prevent Russia from having access to information. A former Danish intelligence officer Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, while interviewed in May 2023, opined that "every public announcement from Ukraine should be viewed as essentially misinformation". [363]
Chinese diplomats, government agencies, and state-controlled media in China have used the war as an opportunity to deploy anti-American propaganda, [364] [365] and they have amplified conspiracy theories created by Russia, such as the false claims that public health facilities in Ukraine are "secret US biolabs". [366] [367] Such conspiracy theories have also been promoted by Cuban state media. [368]
Russian propaganda has also been repeated by the state-controlled outlets of other countries such as Serbia [369] and Iran. [370] [371] In Iran, the state media criticised the British embassy in Tehran after it raised the Ukrainian flag in support of Ukraine. Reports from Sputnik have been actively republished by Iran's pro-regime media. [372] In Latin America, RT Actualidad is a popular channel that has spread disinformation about the war. [373] Authorities in Vietnam have instructed reporters not to use the word "invasion" and to minimize coverage of the war. [374] In South Africa, the governing African National Congress published an article in its weekly newsletter ANC Today endorsing the notion that Russia had invaded Ukraine to denazify it. [375]
Also shot on February 25, a video of an elderly woman scolding a Russian soldier appears to record an actual event in Henichesk. She gave him sunflower seeds so sunflowers would grow when he died. [376] [377] [378]
The wildly popular social media legend, Ghost of Kyiv, "a Ukrainian fighter pilot who shot down six Russian planes cannot be confirmed", said Deutsche Welle on March 1. [379] The story was tweeted by the official Ukraine account and authenticated by former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko but the photo of the pilot posted by Poroshenko turned out to be three years old. [379] The story's factuality has been questioned by both Russian and Western media. The Ukrainian military has not verified it, for one thing, and some of the images were definitely repurposed from elsewhere. [380] But on February 25, the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine suggested that "The Ghost of Kyiv" might be a returning reserve pilot, so they did not deny it either.
The defiant response of a Ukrainian border guard stationed at Zmiinyi (Snake Island) began a Ukrainian framing of the war as David vs. Goliath, which the videos of Ukrainian farmers towing off abandoned Russian tanks have helped to continue. [378]
Some Ukrainians say that the many memes that have circulated since the war began have helped them to cope with their uncertain future by making them laugh. [381] Citizen contributions can also serve the more serious purpose of combatting disinformation, says Daniel Johnson, a Roy H. Park Fellow at UNC Hussman's School of Journalism and former U.S. Army journalist. "It's hard to lie when I have 150 videos showing that you're not in Kyiv and you're not winning," he said. [382]
RT is a Russian state-controlled international news television network funded by the Russian government. It operates pay television and free-to-air channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in Russian, English, Spanish, French, German and Arabic.
RT America was a U.S.-based news channel headquartered in Washington, D.C. Owned by TV Novosti and operated by production company T&R Productions, it was a part of the RT network, a global multilingual television news network based in Moscow and funded by the Russian government. The channel said it reached an audience of 85 million people in the United States, but this figure is disputed. It was distributed through select cable providers, over-the-top services, a live stream through its website, and three low-power digital subchannels. Since the channel's closure, viewers who tune into the cable channel or their live stream are being shown a live feed of an RT International broadcast instead.
Margarita Simonovna Simonyan is a Russian journalist and media executive. She is the editor-in-chief of the Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT, as well as the state-owned media group Rossiya Segodnya.
Ruptly GmbH is a Russian state-owned video news agency specializing in video-on-demand, based in Berlin, Germany. It is a subsidiary of the Russian state-controlled television network RT. Ruptly owns the media channel Redfish and is the major shareholder of the digital content company Maffick. Its chief executive is Dinara Toktosunova. Upon Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the company faced a staff exodus. In January 2023, Toktosunova was sanctioned by Ukraine.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is an ongoing international conflict between Russia, alongside Russian-backed separatists, and Ukraine, which began in February 2014. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported pro-Russian separatists fighting the Ukrainian military in the Donbas war. The first eight years of conflict also included naval incidents, cyberwarfare, and heightened political tensions. In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Media portrayals of the Russo-Ukrainian War, including skirmishes in eastern Donbas and the 2014 Ukrainian revolution after the Euromaidan protests, the subsequent 2014 annexation of Crimea, incursions into Donbas, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, have differed widely between Ukrainian, Western and Russian media. Russian, Ukrainian, and Western media have all, to various degrees, been accused of propagandizing, and of waging an information war.
Sputnik is a Russian state-owned news agency and radio broadcast service. It was established by the Russian government-owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya on 10 November 2014. With headquarters in Moscow, Sputnik maintains regional editorial offices in Washington, D.C., Cairo, Beijing, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro. Sputnik describes itself as being focused on global politics and economics and aims for an international audience.
The propaganda of the Russian Federation promotes views, perceptions or agendas of the government. The media include state-run outlets and online technologies, and may involve using "Soviet-style 'active measures' as an element of modern Russian 'political warfare'". Notably, contemporary Russian propaganda promotes the cult of personality of Vladimir Putin and positive views of Soviet history. Russia has established a number of organizations, such as the Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia's Interests, the Russian web brigades, and others that engage in political propaganda to promote the views of the Russian government.
"Crucified Boy" is a reference to a fake anti-Ukrainian atrocity propaganda story spread by Russian state-owned Channel One on July 12, 2014 as part of broader incitement of hatred toward Ukraine during the War in Donbas.
Eva Karene Bartlett is a Russian-based American Canadian activist, commentator, and blogger who has propagated conspiracy theories in connection to the Syrian civil war, most notably the disproven allegation that the White Helmets stage rescues and "recycle" children in its videos.
The firehose of falsehood is a propaganda technique in which a large number of messages are broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously over multiple channels without regard for truth or consistency. An outgrowth of Soviet propaganda techniques, the firehose of falsehood is a contemporary model for Russian propaganda under Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As part of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian state and state-controlled media have waged an information war by spreading disinformation. Russian propaganda and fake news stories have attacked Ukraine's right to exist and accused it of being a neo-Nazi state, of committing genocide against Russian speakers, of developing nuclear and biological weapons, and of being influenced by Satanism. Russian propaganda also accuses NATO of controlling Ukraine and building up military infrastructure in Ukraine to threaten Russia. Some of this disinformation has been spread by Russian web brigades. It has been widely rejected as untrue and crafted to justify the invasion and even to justify genocidal acts against Ukrainians. The Russian state has denied carrying out war crimes in Ukraine, and Russian media has falsely blamed some of them on Ukrainian forces instead. Some of the disinformation seeks to undermine international support for Ukraine and to provoke hostility against Ukrainian refugees.
On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in an escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that began in 2014. The invasion is the biggest attack on a European country since the Second World War. It is estimated to have caused tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties and hundreds of thousands of military casualties. By April 2023, about 8 million Ukrainians had been internally displaced. More than 8.2 million had fled the country by May 2023, creating Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. Extensive environmental damage caused by the war contributed to food crises worldwide.
Russian disinformation campaigns have occurred in many countries. For example, in Africa, disinformation campaigns led by Yevgeny Prigozhin have been reported in several countries. Russia, however, denies that it uses disinformation to influence public opinion.
NewsFront is a website based in Russian occupied Crimea. It describes itself as "a news agency that runs news in ten languages including Russian, German, English, Bulgarian, Georgian, French, and Spanish." In 2021, the United States Department of the Treasury described it as "a Crimea-based disinformation and propaganda outlet...particularly focused on supporting Russia-backed forces in Ukraine." According to owner Konstantin Knyrik, however, NewsFront is fighting an "information war" against unfair attacks on Russia.
Graham William Phillips is a British freelance journalist, documentary filmmaker and former YouTuber. He previously worked as a stringer for the Russian state-owned television networks RT (2013–2014) and Zvezda (2014–2015), and from early 2015 on, for his YouTube channel. From March 2022, Phillips has covered the Russian invasion of Ukraine, initially from the Chernihiv area of Ukraine, then from Mariupol, then from Donetsk, and then onto the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic.
On Amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and Articles 31 and 151 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation is a group of federal laws promulgated by the Russian government during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These laws establish administrative and criminal punishments for "discrediting" or dissemination of "unreliable information" about the Russian Armed Forces, other Russian state bodies and their operations, and the activity of volunteers aiding the Russian Armed Forces, and for calls to impose sanctions against Russia, Russian organizations and citizens. These laws are an extension of Russian fake news laws and are sometimes referred to as the fakes laws.
Julia Davis is a Ukrainian-born American journalist and media analyst writing for The Daily Beast. She is best known for founding Russian Media Monitor, a project monitoring Russian state television, including its international outlets such as RT. She has been described as the "foremost U.S. expert on Russian government-controlled television and propaganda". She has also been described as a "Russian TV whisperer for American ears". Regarding her founding of the Russian Media Monitor, she has stated that "it felt like a very natural thing that, when the U.S. is under such an attack from that part of the world, that with the unique experiences and skills I have, and the language, that I jump in and try to do something about it." She stated that:
Until 2014, my primary focus was on filmmaking, investigative reporting about crimes, government, corruption and civil rights. However, when Putin invaded Ukraine, I was dismayed to discover the lack of reporting on that topic in the U.S., which meant that a lot of news coverage was coming through the Russian English-speaking channel, RT, right here in the United States. RT previously claimed to be an alternative media outlet that reported about fringe politics, global issues and government corruption, but everything changed after Russia annexed the Crimea. In one of her interviews, [RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita] Simonyan admitted that RT was created as an instrument to be used by the Kremlin for its info-wars against the West.... She explained that it would be too late to start making weapons once the war has already started. Thus, RT was apparently crafted in advance and was masquerading as a legitimate media outlet, to be used as needed.... This became very apparent in 2014. In short order, the Kremlin’s bullhorn was weaponized, spewing out blatant propaganda and outright fakes.
Patrick Lancaster is an American YouTuber, influencer, and former US Navy sailor. Lancaster attempts to position himself as an 'independent crowdfunded journalist'. Lancaster has been widely described as a pro-Kremlin propagandist, and his videos have often been cited by western media, and used by western agencies, due to their inadvertently exposing secret, and compromising Russian military information.
Semyon Vladimirovich Pegov is a Russian military blogger and journalist. He works for the military project WarGonzo and a Telegram channel which has been associated with the Russian special services. He has covered the Russo-Ukrainian War, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and Russo-Georgian War, primarily from a pro-Russian point of view.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)The claims by Ukraine do not compare to the falsehoods being spread by Russia...Instead, Ukraine's online propaganda is largely focused on its heroes and martyrs, characters who help dramatize tales of Ukrainian fortitude and Russian aggression.
Ukrainian bloggers, social media activists and journalists are educating their audiences on how to identify fakes.
The closeup study of news consumption in Ukraine at a time of 'information war' shows that individuals judge the credibility of narratives based on whether issues that matter to them are addressed, not only on whether particular 'facts' are likely to be genuine.
For all the salient differences between these three post-Soviet nations, they have much in common when it comes to their culture and history, which goes back to Kievan Rus', the medieval East Slavic state based in the capital of present-day Ukraine,